One of my least favorite things about our incumbent Governor* is his tendency to adopt Republican talking points, thus giving them a validation they don’t deserve. It’s sometimes called “kicking the hippies” — talking tough about Them Damn Liberals, in an attempt to self-position as a reasonable centrist.
*Same is true of many Democratic politicians, including Barack Obama and the Clintons, which is why Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren can seem so refreshing.
“If one more person says ‘G’day, Mate’ to me, I swear I’m gonna ball ’em up.”
So here he comes, by way of Administration Secretary and Hatchet Man WIth An Adorable Accent Justin Johnson, doing a little light sparring with the public-sector union punching bag.
Secretary of Administration Justin Johnson issued an edict to agency and department heads Tuesday that all new hires within the executive branch must be approved by his office.
The move, according to a memo Johnson sent to agency and department heads, is the result of signals from the Vermont State Employees Association that it is not willing to work with the administration on finding $5 million in personnel savings called for in Gov. Peter Shumlin’s budget proposal.
Yeah, really. How dare the VSEA react exactly how you’d expect them to react?
100 times out of 100, a union is going to balk at reopening a signed contract and acceding to personnel cuts. That’s What They Do. It’s the first round in the dance: management takes hard line, union takes hard line, they get together and work things out.
Johnson knows this. But he very publicly reacted to VSEA’s predictable “Fight Back” petition with a summary judgment: “The petition indicated that the union will not deal with the administration on labor savings.”
The petition indicates no such thing. VSEA is simply staking out a strong opening position for the inevitable deal-making. The administration did the very same thing by incorporating cuts in pay and staffing into its budget.
So why is Johnson going straight from the opening salvo to the dreaded Declaration Of Impasse? Because it makes the administration look serious about cutting spending.
Most of the conversation around the Statehouse these days is about tax and fee increases. Shumlin’s budget called for a mix of new revenue and spending cuts. The last thing he wants is for the public debate to center on the former and ignore the latter. So he sent out his H.M.W.A.A.A.* to stomp on the other end of the seesaw.
*pronounced “HIM-wah.”
He could just as easily, and more productively, said something like “We understand the VSEA’s interest in protecting its members. We do not welcome making cuts, but we believe that Vermont’s budget situation requires it. We look forward to working with the union to find ways to save money while preserving a strong, vibrant state workforce.”
But that wouldn’t have accomplished the mission, which was to make the administration look tough.
This would be nothing more than a harmless bit of political theater, except that it provides tacit support for a Republican talking point: that public sector unions are the enemy of the taxpayer. Shumlin does the same thing when he insists that Vermonters are Taxed Enough Already, or when he tries to cut social service programs, or when he frames health care reform not as a social justice issue, but as an economic growth initiative.
In doing so, he cedes the rhetorical ground to the Republicans. It gets him a bit of short-term shine as a Tough Guy and an Unconventional Democrat, but it hurts the liberal cause in the long run.
Plus, it makes me grind my teeth, and my dentist says I should stop that.
Postscript. Just in case there’s any confusion, I made up the quote under Mr. Johnson’s picture.
The Vermont Political Observer. 
Does this Johnson guy know anything about unions? Or is he an expert the like of what we have seen from Shumlin’s other little projects that have been total failures? Tough guy? Are you kidding me? I don’t know what “ball em up” means – would like to find out.
Hit the bell with this one John. Or is it the nail.
Funny thing. Johnson is an Aussie and I think his brother is a member of that country’s Labour Party. If that’s the case, it’s good to see one brother didn’t drink the Kool-Aid. Aussies support unions and unionized workers. No wonder they ran this Johnson out.
I thought the “quote” under my picture was kind of funny, but, to be clear, I never said that. It is made up.
I thought that was clear enough, but just in case, I’ll add a note to the end of the post. Thanks for writing.
Actually, the “quote” under the picture was hysterically funny. Political theatre all the way. A bit like a home-grown version of “The Onion!”
P.S. Good to see Mr. Johnson has a sens of humor!
Hippie Punching is in total the Democratic Party’s current playbook. Shumlin’s no different. Say what you have to to either get the rubes to pull the lever, or bore ’em to sleep through the election, all the while reassuring The Money things ain’t gonna change one jot. The richest citizens saw their wealth increase a whopping 70% over the last THREE years, while workers and the poor actually saw a 5% contraction in their actual wealth over the same period. Oh, government and business work, all right–just not for the vast majority of us.
Look at the President and his fellow party cheerleaders for that oligarchic endgame Christmas present, the TPP–or how, now, after the travesty of the 2014 midterms are over, leading Democrats are again mumbling about raising taxes on the rich or somesuch weak populism. Little late, donchathink? Might have, y’know, GOTV when it might have mattered. Hippie Punching.
Nope. The Democrats have left the building., and all us good-minded liberals and populists are now without representation. We need to acknowledge this truth and start a new party that doesn’t owe The Money, but comes to collect what they owe us.
Good point, Dave, about the richest citizens and their wealth increases while ours have decreased, and that our guv-business work for those whose wealth has not decreased and no one else. I’ve heard the word corptocracy bandied around to describe it.